Christopher Walken Anecdotes

One of Leonardo DiCaprio's most memorable experiences making films.

Click images to enlarge

"I actually had a scene with him [Walken] where it was one of my most memorable experiences making films – I remember, and I don't know if you remember the scene, but – the scene where I come back to see my dad and he's talking about my mom and all of the sudden he (DiCaprio wincing in pain; he falters)... he like kind of hyperventilates. (Again he mimics Walken clearing his throat). And I was sitting there across the table from him while he was doing that, and it was completely unexpected. It wasn't in the script. It was his own... completely his own doing.

I thought the man was having a heart attack in front of me. I honestly was about two seconds away from saying, 'Cut! There's something wrong with Chris!'

It's a testament how he is as an actor. I was blown away. It is [one of those times] where you have a cinematic experience like that, where you are so forced into the world where you think that it's actual reality." -- Leonardo DiCaprio, IGN FilmForce, Dec 2002.

Scotland, PA. writer / director, Billy Morrissette, had cause to sweat a little.

"Christopher Walken called me and said, 'It's a good script and I like the dialogue, but the ending is f***ing stupid.' He scared the hell out of me. He didn't arrive until the twelfth day of filming, and I did not sleep until then. He had a zillion notes about what he wanted to change. I could see everybody watching me sweat. But he was actually really great and very funny." -- Billy Morrissette, Movieline, Feb / Mar 2002.

Johnny Galecki, co-star in Suicide Kings, talks about working with Walken.

"Walken is incredible; he's mesmerizing. He's just such a unique talent. I just tried to absorb as much as I could from him...He approaches his films as if they're his first one. It's as if everything relies on this one film. He has not become comfortable or lazy or overconfident in any way. There was certainly a paternal feeling with Walken both onscreen and off which we were only too happy to be a part of...

"[Walken] likes to kind of think aloud and lets you know where his thoughts are and where he's at in a scene either mentally or emotionally and lets you know where he's going with it. A lot of those thoughts that he spoke aloud became lines and were left in the movie and gave us the freedom to do the same. In every scene there is some ad-libbing at the very least." -- Johnny Galecki, The Diamonback, 1997.

Abel Ferrara, on directing King of New York.

"The first day we were shooting, we did that scene with the Italians around the table. And Chris says to me, 'I don't like pointing a gun at another actor.' And I was like, 'Oh, man, we've got to shoot a whole movie with guns and you're telling me you don't like pointing a gun at another actor?!' And then we did the scene and Chris shot that guy five times after he was dead; that wasn't in the script! He says he's afraid of guns, and then you say 'Action' and he became -- how do you say it? - very efficient." -- Abel Ferrara, Entertainment Weekly, 03-17-2001.

Chris talks about being frightened by Sean Penn on the set of At Close Range.

"[Sean Penn] Really scared me. You can see it on the screen, because he did it very quickly. In the middle of the take, he ran off the set and I heard him say to the propman, 'Give me the other gun.' When he came back I was concerned that this wasn't the gun he had left with. Who knows? He's acting like some crazy actor and pointing it at my face, and it really scared me. It was near my eye. It was an empty gun - he knew exactly what he was doing. He just wanted to scare me, which is what he did. I got mad afterward and yelled at him, then I said thank you. It's great when actors do that for each other. It's very generous." -- Christopher Walken, Playboy magazine, 1997.

"…but I understood that it was a good thing to do. All good actors do that. I did exactly the same thing to Matthew Broderick when I pointed the gun at him in Biloxi Blues, on his take. I set it up with the prop man beforehand. He was this guy from New York who was sort of like a gangster and he had another gun in his back pocket. I said to him, "When I say 'Give me the other gun,' say to me, 'No, Chris,' and then I'm going to say to you, 'Don't argue with me, just give me the other gun' - ‘Oh’ - and then he reluctantly gave me the other gun. He enjoyed doing it. Matthew didn't know what was going on. I think I actually threw the other gun down and took it from him. It was exactly what happened to me a couple of years earlier." -- Christopher Walken, Film Comment, August 1992.

It was destiny to make Homeboy with Mickey Rourke.

"Mickey Rourke and I were in Heavens Gate together; he had this tiny part and I was playing whatsisname. We were sitting up there in the mountains talking about...dinosaurs. And I told him about this thing I had read in some science magazine, that there's a theory that dinosaurs really never disappeared at all. That in fact all they did was get smaller and smaller, their scales turned into feathers and they flew away-and that in fact dinosaurs are still with us, there just birds. And Mickey said, ‘That's interesting,’ and he started telling me about this movie that he was going to do someday about a boxer and it was called Homeboy. You know, I remember also he told me at the time, ‘There's this guy, the fighters manager, and your gonna play this part.’ I said, ‘Okay Mickey, lets go.’ So almost ten years went by and there we were making it. And I said to him, ‘Why don’t I tell that story about the birds and dinosaurs?’ He said, ‘Right.’ And there is that scene at the beach with all the seagulls, talking about dinosaurs. It's completely disconnected from anything going on in the movie, but I think it's one of the things in the movie...It's real. Here are these two guys who are really kind of victims, talking about the origin and destiny of dinosaurs." -- Christopher Walken, Film Comment, August 1992.

How Max Schreck got his molars - Batman Returns.

"It's an example of what a really good director [Tim Burton] is. At the beginning of the shoot I was standing with him, waiting for them to light the set, and I said that in The Great Gatsby, Gatsby and Nick Carraway are having lunch with the gangster Meyer Wolfsheim, and Nick notices that Wolfsheim is wearing cuff links made out of human molars. Burton calls over his assistant and says, 'Get him cuff links made out of human molars.' Within half an hour the guy comes back with them, and I wore them throughout the movie. It's something the audience wouldn't know, but Burton knew it would be good for me to have them." -- Christopher Walken, Playboy magazine, 1997.

Chris describes playing Cyrano in Who Am I This Time.

"It was really hammy, but I did try to knock their socks off. That was the last thing we shot. They had an auditorium full of local people, in the small town out side of Chicago. They were invited, given sandwiches or something, and we just had the curtain go up, I made my entrance as Cyrano, and I think we shot it in one take. They were like kids in a high school audience, thrilled to be there. It was perfect. I don't know if they would have continued to be that way, but...it was sort of like the real thing, like an amateur production of Cyrano." -- Christopher Walken, Film Comment, August 1992.

Walken, discussing the Russian roulette scene in The Deer Hunter.

"At one point Bob [DeNiro] wanted to put a live round in the gun...just to crank the intensity. And we had a whole conference about 'Okay, we're gonna do it, but we're gonna check this thing 5,000 times. We went to a lot of extremes on that film.

"I don't even like holding them. Whenever I hold a gun, I want to get it out of my hand as quick as possible." --Christopher Walken, Entertainment Weekly, 03-17-2001.

Fears while filming the helicopter scene for The Deer Hunter.

"We got in the helicopter, the camera was hand held, and John Savage was behind me and the door was wide open and there was no safety belts or anything. The helicopter took off and went right up, I think a thousand feet-up as high as the Empire State Building. I was looking out this door and I said, 'John, grab my belt, hang on to me, do not let go whatever happens' - I couldn't believe I was sitting there, next to this open door without even a rope around me or anything. And the camera was rolling...I thought if the helicopter tilted sideways, I'd be gone." -- Christopher Walken, Film Comment, August 1992.

Click on thumbnails to enlarge